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Stomp Rockets Science Lessons

While my grandmother was in Florida she had visited the science museum and bought the boys some new toys.

She gave them a microscope, a stomp rocket kit, and a robot kit.

The boys happily tried out their stomp rockets this afternoon. The boys decided to take both kits outside and have contests.

They experimented with stomping on the rocket launcher, jumping on the rocket launcher, aiming the launcher in different directions; seeing who's rocket would fly higher, or who's rocket would fly further. They had a ball!

They learned science concepts:

Trajectory

Velocity

Weight and mass

Newton's third law

Air pressure

They knew it was air pressure at work and while they understood the heavier person would force more air out of the launcher it was still fun to try and beat each other. They noticed that Alec's rocket was lighter and was affected by the wind more than Ian's rockets which were heavier.

They played for almost an hour, taking turns fairly well too.

After a while Evan and Ian migrated to the beach to dig in the sand in Ian's latest quarry. While outside we saw a red tailed hawk, a turkey buzzard and kept hearing a bird that Alec has on his bird clock. Ian thought it was an owl but Alec told us that it was the black capped chickadee. Since it's his bird clock and he seems to know them all, I took his word for it.

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